Not a single light shone from a single window. Nothing stirred but the fog.

She looked closer into those unmoving streets, and saw the remains of burned-out cars, heaping piles of garbage, red double-decker buses overturned at intersections to block a way in or out. Windows were broken everywhere. Storefronts were boarded. Abandoned vehicles littered every lane and boulevard and bridge, haphazard as toys left over from children’s playtime. London was no longer a city; it was a graveyard.

Anger blossomed inside her again, ugly and huge.

“How they must have suffered,” Lu whispered to the glass. “How horrible it must have been.”

“No more than what you’ve suffered. Or I.”

Startled out of her reverie, Lu looked at Magnus. He didn’t meet her eyes, but judging by the expression on his face he already regretted speaking. She turned away, pretending not to feel his relief when she did. Pretending not to wonder exactly what it was that he’d suffered.

She’d asked Morgan about it, just before she’d hugged her good-bye, and hadn’t gotten a satisfactory answer.

“I have something I need to ask you.”

Morgan’s manicured brows arched. “Which is?”

“Magnus. What happened to him?”

“His face, you mean,” Morgan said. “The scars.”

“No, I . . . I mean yes, I guess so, but not specifically. More like, what happened to make him so . . .”

“Moody? Surly? Unapproachable?”

Lu nodded, biting her lip, and Morgan, being Morgan, instantly guessed the meaning behind this line of questioning.

“Oh, dear, does someone have a soft spot for her gallant rescuer?”

“Maybe,” answered Lu softly, looking at the ground. “But it’s less like a soft spot and more like . . .”

“A painful ache?”

When Lu glanced up, Morgan was staring back at her with affection, and clear understanding, in her eyes.

Lu nodded again, equally embarrassed and relieved. “And I can’t figure out what I should do about that, if anything. He seems like he just wants to be left alone. Like he can’t stand the company of others. And I know how much he hates to be touched. He’s like a feral animal. He’s so . . . rough.”

Morgan chuckled, then smoothed a hand over Lu’s hair, a twinkle in her emerald eyes.

“A diamond in the rough is still a diamond, pet. One just has to know how to handle it to bring out all the facets of its beauty. Only with a pair of gentle, loving hands can it be polished to perfection. Men are the exact same way.”

That was it. Morgan hadn’t told her what had happened to Magnus to make him so feral. To scar his face and body. She’d simply smiled a Mona Lisa smile and suggested that Lu treat Magnus the same way she’d treat a cornered animal: gently, and with extreme care.

Gently. She looked again at her bare hands, then from the pocket of her jacket—courtesy of Honor’s closet—Lu withdrew one of the pairs of gloves Magnus had given her, and pulled them on.

They touched down in the wilderness between Calais and Boulogne-sur-Mer in France. It was an old-growth forest, dense with towering trees that were perfect for concealment, and far enough away from civilization to be safe from the Peace Guard, Enforcement, or electronic surveillance. They’d encounter those problems soon enough, but for now Magnus was satisfied of their safety.

Safety being a relative term; he was as much in danger of losing himself completely as he always was around Lumina.

She was quiet and careful, following his lead without speaking as he jumped out of the helicopter, hoisted his small pack onto his back, and began to head north toward the rendezvous point where Jack had indicated her people would pick them up. They’d be staying their first night in one of dozens of safe houses the Dissenters operated in France, but they’d have to hurry to make it through the forest in time; the people who were meeting them would wait only fifteen minutes, no more. If Magnus missed this first pickup, he and Lu would be spending the night walking.

And when daybreak came, they’d have to find shelter or die. Already the thin clouds overhead were tainted that ominous, poisonous red. Farther inland, the clouds grew thicker, the color more opaque.

He needn’t have worried. Lumina was as swift as she was silent, and had no trouble keeping up with him as he navigated through the dark forest toward the access road. The road used to function as the initial route from the ports of the seafront to the interior cities, but now was as abandoned as London had been. There was no more international commerce, no shipping or exports, no trade between nations at all. There were only large, self-supporting cities existing like dystopian oases in the middle of the vast desert of the remains of the world, and the Phoenix Corporation controlled them, as they did everything else.

Even the clouds.

They broke through the tree line and the road was there, two lanes of cracked asphalt just beyond a shallow ditch choked with brambles and weeds. On the other side of the road, a deer stood frozen—nose twitching, ears pricked forward, black eyes shining in terror. A second passed, then she bounded off into the woods, her tail a flash of white against the darkness.

“Oh,” breathed Lu, amazed, watching it go. “I’ve never seen one of those before. Only in books.”

Magnus had grown up in the Amazon. He’d seen every kind of bird and reptile and mammal—had, in fact, eaten all of them—and couldn’t imagine growing up as she had, confined to a city with no access to the natural world. She was an animal, as were they all, and she needed animal outlets.

He was arrested by that thought. She’d said she’d never had a chance to practice her Gifts, spending all her energy on trying to be “normal,” and had only just yesterday Shifted for the first time . . .

“Do you know what the Ikati actually are, Lumina?”

She didn’t turn to look at him, and really, could he blame her? He knew he’d been acting on the far side of sullen and testy, but keeping her at a safe arm’s length had become of paramount importance to him. After that kiss, after everything that itched and throbbed between them, after the revelation about his own, imminent demise . . . Magnus was taking no chances.

He was going to die. Soon. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—be so selfish as to take what he wanted from her, which was much, much more than just another kiss.

“What do you mean?” Her brows pulled together in confusion.

“You, Honor, and your mother are the only living Ikati who can Shift to something else than our original form . . . you know that, right?”

Now she did look at him, and that familiar snap of connection made his blood sizzle in his veins.

“Original form?”

He couldn’t help it. His own hand betrayed him. Before he could think, he reached out and lightly touched a lock of her hair. It was like silk between his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was husky. “This body is a clever disguise. We learned to look human millennia ago as a survival mechanism, but this isn’t what we are.”

Her hand lifted, then stilled in the air, just inches from his, as if she’d been about to touch him but stopped herself. “What are we then? Will you show me?”

Her voice was lowered to match his own, the softest throaty purr, and it was all he could do not to take her into his arms and give in to all the wild thrashing inside him, the burning and the need. Instead, he only gave a curt, wordless nod, dropped his hand and turned away.